Mother Unexpected

Ever since I had a baby, the most popular question I get asked when talking about her has been “Does she sleep through the night?” Most people seem almost disgusted when I tell them that she doesn’t, as if because of her sleep patterns I’m not doing something right. Or they have a thousand tricks to get her to sleep through the night, like it’s something that has to be done for her to be considered a “good” baby. I’ve heard all kinds of off the wall comments about K-Kitten’s sleep patterns.

• Put cereal in her bottle. She’ll sleep longer, because her tummy will stay fuller longer.
• Don’t let her naps go to long during the day. Wake her up so she’ll be more tired at night.
• If you put her to bed and she cries, don’t pick her up, she’ll learn to put herself to sleep.
• She doesn’t need to eat at night, she’s only doing it out of habit.

I will admit that some of those suggestions may work, some may not, and all are simply opinion, even researchers can’t agree.

I will never feed my baby cereal in a bottle, I’ve yet to feed her baby cereal, and she certainly wouldn’t get it in a bottle. There are too many dangers associated with cereal in bottles. Cereal is an empty calorie and apart from being an aspiration hazard in a bottle, it could lead to a child that over eats regularly. It can throw a babies full/empty tummy meter completely out of whack. Leading to…. you guessed it! Increased risk of Obesity.

Napping too much through the day could logically cause a baby to sleep less at night. I don’t have a problem with waking up my napping babe if we have to go somewhere or if it’s apparent she’s pooped all over herself (she’s notorious for not caring a lick about how dirty her diaper is). However, waking her up early from her naps usually leads to an extra nap before bedtime and actually causes her to stay up later than she would because of that extra nap. So, that still doesn’t affect the amount of time she sleeps at night for me.

Crying it out, or the Ferber method, has been fought for on both sides of the fence more times than I care to think about. There are a number of reasons for us and many others that cry-it-out is just not the solution. I’m sure there are those that would argue that there’s nothing detrimental with the cry-it-out method, but I just can’t listen to my little girl cry for us for any reason and ignore her on purpose. Everyone comments on how she’s such a happy baby, and I think our prompt response to her needs when it’s warranted is a contributing factor. I don’t rush to her rescue when it’s apparent she doesn’t need immediate attention (yeah, I know what she’s wanting when she cries), I do however console and remedy the issue before she gives up hope.

I see the Ferber method as “breaking” a child. Convincing them that they have no choice but to stay there and either amuse themselves or go to sleep because no one is coming. I think it backfires on parents as well. A parent that listens to their child cry and forces themselves to ignore it have a tendency to block out the cry in varying degrees all throughout the day and night.

In the case of eating at night, my little K-Kitten does need to eat at night. How do I know? Because she asks to eat. Other than her cues, she reverse cycled when I went back to working full time. On average a baby over 12lbs would eat 19 – 32 oz (estimates and a big variable), K-Kitten averages 8 – 15 oz while I’m gone to work. She nurses when I get home, once at bedtime, and once about 12am and then again at 6am. So she wakes up once at night to nurse. I’m OK with that, so it shouldn’t be an issue right? Unfortunately, everyone doesn’t see it that way. But I really don’t care about them.

So what’s a momma to do?! There are lots of more gentle way’s to get a baby to sleep, to stay asleep, and to put yourself in a better frame of mind to deal with night-waking. Some of those ways include:

• Create a routine. Babies thrive on routine, and are more likely to go to sleep when they “know” it’s bedtime.
• Fresh air and exercise. Maybe not for the fresh air, but being in a house all day is boring. Engage their minds.
• Consistent napping, one missed nap could lead to a lot of trouble. Cranky babies are a lot less likely to go to sleep without a fight.

Most of all, there’s no right and wrong way to do things as a parent. What I do for my children could be exactly what you would never do. If everything was one-size-fits all, then there wouldn’t be so many different ways to do things. Just don’t do something because someone else thinks that’s how the world needs to be. Be informed, make up your own mind. Please though, get the information, and remember that just because what I do wouldn’t be what you would do, it doesn’t make me a failure/bad parent/monster.

My baby doesn’t sleep through the night, and I’m not gonna make her.

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Has someone looked at you like you were a bad parent because of a milestone like sleeping through the night? Does your baby sleep through the night? Did you use cry-it-out with success? Does night-waking bother you?

I worked full time before I had K-Kitten. I returned to my full time position only 6 weeks after her birth (three weeks of which were unpaid). I had a lot of reservations about going back to work, I could not imagine running off and leaving this tiny little creature without it’s momma for almost 10 hours a day. I did not sleep for days before I had to return to work. I worried about keeping up my milk supply, I hate pumping, and I fretted that something would happen while I was gone.

Before I returned to work, I purchased a double electric pump. I have a hate-hate relationship with that thing. I hate using it, I hate cleaning it, and I hate the numbers it provides me. I didn’t like having to look at the fact that I brought home x number of ounces vs the x number of ounces she ate. It’s a correlation that never occurred to me when she only ate straight from the tap.

Now that K-Kitten is 8 months old and I’ve been doing this for a while, the numbers don’t concern me as much as they used to. I’ve fought to make time to pump at work, which is increasingly hard to do when working in the field, and I have yet to have to supplement (although I thought I might have to a few times). I have never questioned my decision to pump at work, but there are some out there that feel that it’s a hardship on finances, career, and family relationships.

In this post, The Economic Consequences of Breastfeeding, there are arguments stating that breastfeeding and returning to work has an impact on mother’s income and overall finances of the household. It states, “…While a can of premium formula comes with a premium price tag, feeding infants with formula uses less of one of mom’s most precious resources: time.” I have to completely disagree with this. In the 30-minutes (give or take) daily that I spend with my pump, using and cleaning, and the time it takes my husband/caregiver to warm breastmilk and feed her, I couldn’t buy a high-priced latte. I can see how some mothers that choose to continue breastfeeding may decide to take more time to do so (a reduction in hours, etc.), but this is a choice, and not a cause-effect situation. If I chose to breastfeed and magically got a pay-cut, that would be different, but I am proof that it can be done without losing a dime at work. I’d like to think that I’ve missed less work because of breastfeeding.

Working, pumping, and being a “full-time” mom at home too, can be overwhelming. I feel guilty for it, but I look at my job as my “paid vacation”. I can only talk about baby poop, play peek-a-boo, and blow rasperries so much. Working forces me to get out and have some adult time. Because of that adult time, I feel I can fully dedicate myself to my daughter with a clear head and a lot more patience even after a stressful day at work. Being exhausted comes with the territory of being a working mom. It takes a lot of organization, perseverance, and planning skill that honestly I didn’t think that I had. Taking care of yourself and keeping a routine are mentioned frequently and I completely agree that there are things that you need to do to successfully work and parent without being overwhelmed.

I feel proud that both my husband and I work full-time and do whatever we have to do to provide the best life we can to our darling daughter, since neither of us make enough to live off of solely. Being a parent is hard work, no matter what way you look at it. I do wonder though, if my choice to work full-time outside of the home will affect K-Kitten in the long run.

There is an increasing number of statements arising that are directly related to working mothers and all kinds of side effects that this may have have on children. Just recently a study by a team at London University College links not only a parent’s body mass index, but their employment status to a higher risk of childhood obesity in their children. A Reuters Health article stated this about the study:

Children of mothers who worked full-time were 48 percent more likely to be overweight or obese than children of non-working mothers. That was with factors such as socioeconomics, parents’ weight and breastfeeding (which some studies have linked to a lower risk of childhood obesity) taken into account.

I don’t think working moms directly attribute to childhood obesity. Indirectly though, I believe that some working households could do better in terms of food choices based on convenience instead of health of the family as a whole. I try to make the best choices for my family in every aspect, and continuing to work is one of those choices I had to make. I think that because I work, my life and my daughter’s, is more enriched and exciting. I want to raise her to be an independent, strong, and financially savvy woman, and to do that I think I need to continue to work, aspire to new things, and of course… pay those bills.

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Do you work outside of the home? Do you enjoy a little time away from baby, or do you count the seconds until you’re reunited? Would you like to be a stay at home mom? Do you think a mother working has an adverse affect on the children?

This is probably your average birth story, but this one day changed my life so profoundly that while I’ve forgotten bits and pieces (due to my dose of staydol), it sent me down this winding road of motherhood that I never thought I would travel.

I was a lucky pregnant lady — morning all-day sickness until 14 weeks that turned off like a switch, through the floor blood pressure,       excellent lab work, and ultrasounds all looked wonderful. I had picked my due date before we ever went to the doctor and it was pretty much spot on. If you’ve never seen it or used it, MonthlyInfo is a site where you can track that pesky monthly cycle. It’s the reason I noticed that I was late, and later helped me determine my due date.

I loved my OB, he was wonderful. I never missed a visit and I remember him scolding me only once for gaining 7 pounds in a month (we were aiming for only four). He answered all of my questions without hesitation and reassured me when I needed reassurance. In retrospect though, some of those answers should have been giant red flags to me about the hospital and their policy. I never attended birth classes (I”m glad I didn’t, they were not much in the way of helpful — Bradley is unheard of here) and there are no doulas or birth assistants anywhere to be found.

Wednesday morning October 14th 2009 I was awaken by a contraction at exactly 6am. I went back to sleep wondering if it was actually a contraction or a braxton-hicks contraction that everyone was telling me would be perfectly normal to have since I had never had any. An hour later, another one came. At 8am I got out of bed when I woke with another one, at the beginning of that week I had started to work from home in anticipation of K-Kitten’s arrival due on the 20th. Now that my contractions had started, I had planned on telling them that I would not be working today at all. Unfortunately, the phone system at the office had other plans for me.

The office called me at 9am and asked me to come in, the phone system was down (of course I was the only one with a hand in the configuration). They sent our controller/HR/Accounting lady (the only other lady in the office) to come get me so I would not have to drive. I worked the entire day with contractions about an hour apart. Side note: I fixed the phone system. I got home around 6:30pm.

No real progress, contractions were steady at one hour apart, and I was comfortable. As a matter of fact, I was choosing my “get pumped” music for labor and delivery. My choice song at the time — I Will Not Bow – Breaking Benjamin. At 8pm, contractions sped up to about every 30 minutes apart.

Father Unexpected was working a 24-hour shift (he’s an EMT), so I decide to call him and let him know he should not be taking any out of town runs — but I think it will be a while yet he needn’t worry. By 9pm, contractions had sped up to 15 minutes apart. At this point, I call FU back and tell him he needs to come home that things are speeding up and I’d rather he be home.

It’s a 30 mile drive from his workplace home, I’m 100% positive he made it home faster than should actually be possible considering the types of roads between here and there. We finish packing by 10pm, I take a nice long shower, eat some around 11pm (since I was pretty sure they wouldn’t allow me to eat), and I refused to leave until I could not stand the contractions without wincing. We left the house at 11:30pm, my contractions were 10 minutes apart and moderately painful, my water had not broken yet.

The rest goes pretty fast.

We got to the hospital at 12am on the 15th. Contractions were 5 minutes apart when we timed them in the car (it gave me something to do). They put me in this little room to “verify the labor” and sat me in a chair! I mean really?! I’m going to sit in a chair and answer questions while having contractions. They decide that I REALLY am in labor and they put me in the crappy gown and started the IV — the IV that I didn’t want, but my husband wanted (unfortunately, he’s all for medical interventions like that and fetal monitoring). I agreed to the IV and baseline fetal monitoring as long as I wanted to stay in bed.

Sadly, the first thing my little nurse — dressed in a blue jeans skirt and white long-sleeved blouse — said to me “I’ll call the anesthesiologist and we’ll make sure you can get your epidural.”. She did a double-take when I refused. I HATE needles! There is no way on this good earth that I could let someone stick a needle in my back and make me go numb from that point down, ain’t gonna happen people. The next three nurses that walked into the room each asked me if I wanted an epidural. I finally had to tell them that I was aware of all the pain relief options available to me and I would ask if I required any of them.

It’s 1am and my nurse has strapped the fetal monitors on me, checked me — 3cm, contractions are 1 min apart almost back to back, and asked if this was my first child. I’m scolded repeatedly for flopping around like a fish trying to get comfortable and making it ‘hard to get a reading on the baby moving around so much’. After some fussing, she said she would be back in an hour to check on me, to call if I needed anything. Not 15 minutes after she walked out of the room my water broke, and dear all that is holy, on came the pain.

I screamed, then I pressed the nurse call button… I screamed, then I pressed the nurse call button. My nurse walks in and I tell her that my water broke, she checks. Nonchalantly she informs me that I’m 6 cm, my water did break, and that she would be back in a minute to get my information it would probably still be a while before I had the baby. It was then I realized that they’ve not even finished checking me in! It’s almost 2am and I’m in full-blown labor and they’re asking me admission questions!

They did manage to get my hospital bracelets on me and officially check me into the hospital about 2:40am.

I was loud, and no one liked it. I know they didn’t. One nurse came in and “joked” that I was scaring everyone else on L&D, that everyone was scheduled for inductions. I was thinking in the back of my mind, How dare she?! If I’m going to be paying 4,000 dollars out of my pocket because of my high-deductible insurance I will labor in anyway I damn well please. Besides, screaming is how I cope with pain. Really, it works for me, I scream and let it all out, it’s my personal admission that there’s nothing I can do for it to stop it so I have to cope.

I don’t know the exact time, but I know it wasn’t long after I had my bracelets on, I got the urge to push. I frantically pushed on that nurse call button with no luck. Finally I sent FU to fetch my nurse. Turns out my nurse call button was not working all night, my screams seemed to get some attention though. I open my eyes when they come rushing back into the room for a moment, I’m taking a break between a contraction. The next thing I know “Honey, I”m giving you something to take the edge off”, and she had ALREADY given it to me! I had the mind about me to ask what it was, Staydol. I did not want this. I was 8 cm, had been suffering for hours, and I thought I was doing damn good.

After my dose of staydol, everything went to shit for me. I discover, they’ve not paged the doctor yet, he’s at least 15 minutes out. They’re making me lay down because they’re doing internal exams, K-Kitten is station one, they’re begging me not to push, and I dilate to 10 while this girl tells me about my baby’s hair and she’s doing another exam. For those of you that have had children, you know that telling a laboring woman that feels that overwhelming need to push it’s like telling a patient who has dyslexia to go read Faulkner.

By the time the Doctor arrives, it’s a hit and run situation. At this point things get really fuzzy as the staydol really kicks in. The contractions still really sucked just as bad as previously, although when I was finally allowed to push the pain was much more tolerable. I remember this one thing — between one of my contractions, they actually asked me if I was alright. When my contractions would subside, they thought I was going into shock, I couldn’t move/talk/hold my eyes open because of the staydol, it was like I was a drunk giving birth.

I ended up having an episiotomy that I did not want, because guess what?! I had no idea they were doing it. I did ask for a local anesthetic, and I’m really happy I did, but I don’t think that gave the doctor explicit permission to cut me just because I was already numb.

15 minutes of active pushing and my daughter was born. They let Father Unexpected cut the cord, did a quick check of her (FU caught this on video — I don’t remember her first cries, but I have them on video), let me hold her a minute, then cleaned her up while I got stitched up. She was thirty minutes old when I got to breastfeed her for the first time. She is my little baby barracuda, but that’s another story in and of itself. There is video of me talking to the camera talking about ‘booby’, I regret it, but I was so out of it.

I had a short and relatively uneventful birth experience. I hate to sound like a complainer (which is what I’ve been told a lot), but I really wish that dose of staydol never happened. I have searched all over the internet and locally since I gave birth and found that I am not alone in feeling so used. Used for the convenience of someone else. The goal isn’t just for a healthy baby, but a healthy baby and mother — mentally, physically, and everything in-between. If I knew then, what I know now — I could have prevented that dose of staydol and I would be able to remember my baby’s first breath and the first hours of her life without having to refer to a video.

I welcomed K-Kitten into this world October 15th 2009 at 3:24 am. She was 6lbs 14oz and 20 inches long.